Timothy O. Howe

Timothy Otis Howe (24 February 1816-25 March 1883) was a US Senator from Wisconsin (R) from 4 March 1861 to 3 March 1879 (succeeding Charles Durkee and preceding Matthew H. Carpenter) and Postmaster General from 20 December 1881 to 25 March 1883 (succeeding Thomas L. James and preceding Walter Q. Gresham).

Biography
Timothy Otis Howe was born in Livermore, Maine in 1816, and he became a lawyer in 1839. In 1845, he was elected to the state legislature, but he moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin shortly after and opened his own law office there. He served as a circuit judge from 1851 to 1855, and he served as a US Senator from 1861 to 1879 as a Republican. He was an abolitionist and a supporter of the Fifteenth Amendment, and he turned down President Ulysses S. Grant's offer of becoming Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court because he feared that his Senate seat would go to a Democrat. He still lost his Senate seat in 1877, and he served as Postmaster General from 1881 until his death in 1883.